


iv. acts & scenes.

by The Sneak (AloryShannon)



Series: Welcome to the Akatsuki Public Library, how may we help you to die--I mean, today? [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Library, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-03
Updated: 2008-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AloryShannon/pseuds/The%20Sneak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A/N: This chapter was prompted by my friend Anne’s comment: "Sasori would probably have to work with Deidara to do children’s events with puppets."</p>
    </blockquote>





	iv. acts & scenes.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This chapter was prompted by my friend Anne’s comment: "Sasori would probably have to work with Deidara to do children’s events with puppets."

Sasori despises children. He says as much to Deidara when the blonde cheerfully asks him why he’s being even more snappish and ill-tempered than usual.

“Aw, I don’t think they’re so bad,” the younger man chuckles, not looking up from the rough sketches he’s making on some sizeable pieces of cardboard.

Of course you don’t, Sasori thinks, stabbing the needle into the tasseled faux-velvet curtain he’s repairing with much more vigour than is necessary. You’ve far too many similarities between you for you to be bothered by them the way that I am. Needlessly verbose, loud, fidgety, attention-seeking, little concept of personal space, constantly asking questions without stopping to listen to the answers, devouring junk food at every available opportunity, irresponsible in many different areas--habits that I simply cannot abide, and that are standard behaviour for _you._

The Head Reference Librarian quickly finishes with the curtain, moving on to the unenviable task of unpacking the library-owned puppets from a large, grey Tupperware container. His former associate who had been in charge of all the Children’s programming had left in something of a huff (being fired after an especially unpleasant altercation with a coworker concerning dual charges of assault and molestation tended to produce that effect), and Sasori doubts that he’d taken any special care in cleaning up the supplies he’d been granted.

And the redhead’s expectations are not disappointed; after prying off the lid, he can only stare at the jumbled mass of string and the bits of puppets poking out of it, the whole lot resembling nothing so much as a bunch of unfortunate insects trapped in a demented spider’s web.

“How did I let you talk me into this?” Sasori grumbles after a good ten minutes of attempting to untangle the almost hopelessly knotted puppet strings.

Across the room Deidara grins and keeps working on the backgrounds he’s painting for the story he’s planning on enacting. “You didn’t,” he says, unconsciously swiping at his face with the back of his hand and leaving a streak of vibrant emerald green across one cheek. “Manager-sama threatened to assign you _all_ the shelving in the Children’s section for three weeks if you didn’t help me with the puppet show scheduled for today.”

Sasori shudders inwardly at the very thought; children’s books were inane and pointless, and unsanitary on top of that. He thinks of the countless times he’s watched with thinly-veiled distaste as toddlers wiped runny noses on palms or shirtsleeves, then turned right around and ‘helped’ their parents by handling each and every book in a stack of thirty with their grubby, snotty little hands; he grimaces as he remembers seeing book-corners being shoved into tiny mouths, then removed, admired, and discarded once covered in the proper amount of spit; he scowls on failing to hear the hand dryers running in the bathroom as parents exit the bathrooms with their children, turn, and continue on into the stacks, running their fingers along the rows of books and leaving who knows how many kinds of germs in their wake.

The borderline obsessive-compulsive redhead has learned to allay the revulsion he feels after watching such patrons pass through by taking a can of Lysol around the Reference area regularly, especially in the winter months, spraying and wiping down as many visible surfaces as he can manage between dealing with patrons; he avoids the Children’s area altogether if at all possible.

Unfortunately, it won’t be possible today.

Giving up on the puppet strings for the time being, Sasori glances across the room at Deidara, attempting to determine what kind of story they’re going to be putting on by the various backdrops the blonde is studiously working away on, but what he can see of the backdrops is conventional enough that it could feasibly be the scenery for any number of stories.

“Dare I ask what story you’ve selected for us to perform?” He isn’t really curious; he just wants to know how much aspirin he’ll most likely have gone through by the end of the day, and if he’ll have to pick more up on the way home.

“We’re doing ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. Did you find that one puppet, danna?”

“Yes,” Sasori replies, grudgingly opening one of the wooden cases he’d set off to the side and revealing a truly lovely little thing, with large, almost luminous blue eyes, an intricate, lacy frock, and (of course) bouncing golden curls.

Deidara spares it maybe a half a glance, nodding disinterestedly. “Not bad, yeah, not bad,” he concedes before shoving something almost alarmingly hairy into Sasori’s unwilling hands, “but take a look at mine!”

The object Deidara has so proudly foisted upon him resembles nothing so much as a furry brown oven mitt. Two googly eyes of different sizes gaze blankly off in opposite directions, its flat, noseless face split with a snaggle-toothed mouth that slants upwards in an unnaturally large, permanent smile that ends at the top of its left ear, which is floppy and placed noticeably lower than the right.

Sasori stares at it for a long moment, temporarily robbed of the capacity for speech.

 

[ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v441/alory_shannon/Stuff%204%20My%20Projects/?action=view&current=BEAR_PUPPET_LOL.jpg)

It doesn’t take long for it to return to him, however. “This is without a doubt the most horrendous attempt at creating a puppet that I have ever had the misfortune of encountering.”

“Aw, I thought it came out pretty cute! Sorta avant-garde, yeah?”

“Oh yes…” Sasori says as he drops the bear puppet onto a nearby table atop two others which fared no better in the aesthetics department, his tone expressive of several choice emotions, sincerity not being one of them. “Very…Picasso.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too! But it’s more like surrealism than cubism, really, so actually maybe more Dalí. Anyway, we’re on in half an hour, so help me get this stuff set up now, yeah.”

Something in Sasori balks at being ordered around by this disorderly, scatterbrained _child,_ but Deidara is acting under Pein’s orders, and since he _really_ doesn’t want to get stuck shelving grimy picture books for a month, there’s nothing for it; he does as the blonde says, and sets to work getting the puppet show booth set up properly.

* * *

 

Half an hour later finds them both crouching behind the rather wobbly booth--there were certain important pegs and weights missing, and no time to really look for them, so Sasori’s foot is keeping one of the supports firmly anchored to the floor, while Deidara is bracing the booth with his shoulder to keep the whole thing from tipping over backwards on them. Deidara peers out through a narrow slat just below the ‘stage’, and finds the crowd all settled in (or as settled as they’re going to get, anyway), so he smiles, clears his throat, and begins.

“Thank you, one and all, for coming this afternoon. We’ve got a great show for you this evening, yeah, so without further ado, the Akatsuki Public Library proudly presents ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’.

“Once upon a time, there lived a little girl named Goldilocks who had beautiful golden hair…”

The curtain sweeps aside to reveal Sasori’s lovely little puppet making her way across the stage; she pauses to raise a hand to her hair at the compliment, making a nearly believable attempt at stroking the shiny flaxen ringlets.

“…The most beautiful in all the land, except for mine of cour— _OW!_ Fine, danna, I’ll stick to the story, but you keep your elbows to yourself, yeah! Ahem, anyway, she had an Evil Stepmother who was jealous of how beautiful she was--yes, she _did,_ this is _my_ story!--so one day, the Evil Stepmother decided to send Goldilocks to visit her grandmother in the woods, which were of course filled with all sorts of dangerous wild animals.

“Fortunately, Goldilocks had a Fairy Godmother who was looking out for her, and who turned a pumpkin into a carriage, which protected Goldilocks pretty well until the path got too narrow for the carriage to go on. So she picked up her basket full of food for her granny and got out of the carriage and started to walk the rest of the way, but right before she got there, she passed a house she’d never seen before. She was really curious about her grandmother’s new neighbours, so she decided to knock and introduce herself, but though she knocked and knocked, no one came to the door. Trying the handle, she found that it was open, so she went inside to look around…see, I don’t think Goldilocks really did anything wrong here--I mean, the bears just left their house unlocked while they went for that walk, so I think all their stuff was fair game, yeah.”

“…The story, Deidara.”

“Oh, right. Anyway. As she walked into the house, she said to herself, ‘Oh, I’m hungry, and I smell something good!’ And there in the kitchen, she found three places with three bowls of porridge. And the big one was too hot, the medium one was too cold, but the little one was juuuust right. So she ate it all up--you know, that’s something that I’ve never understood--porridge is GROSS, why would she want to steal it?”

“Deidara—”

“If I was the Baby Bear, I’d be GLAD she’d eaten mine, yeah!”

“Deidara, _just finish the story.”_

“Fine, yeah. Next she found three chairs—small, medium, and large—and she tried sitting in all of them, but only the little one fit her right. But she must’ve had too much of that disgusting porridge, because she broke that chair like it was made of matches.

“ ‘What a crummy chair,’ Goldilocks said, ‘Must’ve been made in China. Well, all this housewrecking has made me sleepy. I should definitely find somewhere to take a nap in here, since there’s no way the people who live here might come back and be upset at me for eating their food and breaking their furniture.’ So she went through the house, and after a cool side story with a looking glass and another side story with the creepy old guy named Bluebeard who lived in the basement--which I’d love to tell you about but just don’t have the time today, so come back for the next storytime, yeah?--she found three beds, small, medium, and large again. And she curled up and fell asleep in the smallest one, which somehow happened to be juuuust right.

“So of course, while she was still asleep, the Three Bears came home from their walk, yeah, and boy were they pissed to find that someone had eaten their food, wrecked the furniture, and gotten rid of the crazy old guy in the basement, who they were saving to eat when times got hard during the winter or if they ever ran out of porridge. The Three Bears could smell her, so they came tearing up the stairs and found her asleep in Baby Bear’s bed. But no matter how they growled and shook her, Goldilocks stayed asleep, because the porridge she’d eaten was MAGIC PORRIDGE, and only True Love’s Kiss could wake her from—OUCH. FINE, the Baby Bear got a little too close and slobbered on her cheek on accident, and she woke right up, yeah, how’s that?”

“Disgusting. But at least it brings us closer to the ending of this literary travesty.”

“Heh, that’s what _you_ think, hmm. So when Goldilocks saw the Three Bears all standing around the bed, she shrieked a girly shriek—go ahead, danna!”

“…”

“C’mon, you can do it, yeah!”

_“Deidara.”_

“…You’re no fun at all, danna.”

“I am not paid to be ‘fun’. Now get on with it.”

“So anyway, she woke up, saw the Three Bears, screamed, and leaped out the window into the arms of these Seven Dwarves who’d she’d made friends with on a previous visit to her Grandmother’s house. And she ran all the way back home to the castle, where her Evil Stepmother wasn’t very happy to see her, but figured she’d find another way to get rid of her later.”

_“Finally._ The en—”

“But little did Goldilocks know that the bears had followed her home—”

“...What do you think you’re doing?”

“Hey, it makes sense! Bears can run a lot faster than people, yeah, so why wouldn’t they follow her?”

“Oh for the love of…”

“And the Papa Bear went right up to the door, yeah, and he knocked and said, ‘Little girl, little girl, let me in! But Goldilocks said—”

“Absolutely not. My puppets will have nothing more to do with this rampant idiocy.”

“I _said,_ ‘But Goldilocks said’—”

“And I said n—”

A resounding crash and a clatter; the booth and backdrop give an alarming quiver, prompting several parents to pull their children a good bit farther away; the Goldilocks doll slumps for a minute before ‘coming back to life’ with an awkward jerk, her movements decidedly less lifelike than before.

“—Give that back.”

_“Ahem,_ but Goldilocks said, ‘Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!’”

“Give that back immediately, Deidara, or so help me—”

“—To which the Baby Bear replied, ‘But you’re a girl, yeah, you don’t have hair on your chin!’ ‘Oh yeah, that’s what YOU think!’ Goldilocks sai—OW! Danna, that was my foot!”

“I am well aware of that. Now hand over my puppet.”

“Fine, but play her _right_ this time, yeah!”

“I _was_ playing her correctly; _you’re_ the one ruining the story.”

“It’s called artistic license!”

“There is nothing _remotely_ artistic about it.”

“Look, can we get back to the story, yeah?”

“The story is _over.”_

“But that’s the thing--stories never really end! They keep growing and changing—”

“No. It is _over._ And the bears went home and left Goldilocks alone. And they all lived happily ever after, the e— ”

“Or they WOULD have, had Goldilocks remembered to lock her OWN front door, yeah! Before she knew it, all three bears were in her room, staring at her hungrily, since she’d eaten all their porridge!”

“And just how, exactly, did they get into the house?”

“Well, the Papa Bear said that he’d huff and he’d puff—”

“— _Wrong_ story—”

“—Because somehow, despite his lack of opposable thumbs, the Papa Bear managed to get the door open. By smashing it down, yeah. And before Goldilocks could say—”

“This is the most ridiculous excuse for a fairy-tale I have ever heard.”

“—And before Goldilocks could finish her snide remark, the three bears lunged at her and tore her into small, medium, and large pieces, which they promptly ate in place of their porridge, yeah.”

With few brief _cracks_ and a sharp _snap,_ the lovely little Goldilocks doll is no more.

“…”

“ ‘Yum!’ said the Baby Bear. ‘This meal is _just right!’ ”_

“…Deidara…you…”

“And so the bears finished their grisly yet well-deserved meal—”

“But before they could escape back into the woods after completing their terrible deed, the Brave Woodcutter from the next story over happened to stop by, and when he saw what happened—”

“HOLY SHIT, DANNA, THAT’S A REAL EXACTO KNIFE, YEAH—”

“—he wasted no time in doling out judgment on the wicked—”

The Brave Woodcutter brandishes his Exacto Knife (which has been fastened to the puppet with electrical tape, though a black-gloved hand appears to supply a little more strength for the valiant attack) and _HACK HACK HACK_ s away at the nearest bear.

“HEY _WATCH_ IT, MY HAND IS IN THERE!”

“—For he had once saved another little girl with that very blade, by cutting open a wolf.”

“But the bears would not just sit idly by and let themselves get cut up, and they outnumbered the Brave Woodcutter, yeah! So they—OUCH, you got _ME_ —went for his puppet-strings, knowing that to be his biggest weakness—”

“Deidara, if you break another of my—“

A loud _SNAP_ cuts off Sasori’s threat as ‘Papa Bear’ jerks ‘the Brave Woodcutter’ hard enough that all his strings break simultaneously.

“—Alright brat, that is IT—”

The unmistakable sound of a scuffle breaking out issues from behind the booth, which shakes even more violently, accompanied by the sound of ripping cloth, creaking boards, and something sharp and metal being dragged through cardboard.

“AH! LET GO!”

“Stop, _stop_ —Deidara, hold still!”

“Like HELL I will, yeah! You’ve got a KNIFE—”

“—Will you just _listen?_ If you don’t stop thrashing about like that you’re going to—”

With a final wobble, the booth sways ominously, then collapses against the foremost backdrop with a loud _WHUMPH;_ the others stacked behind the first waver for half a second, almost appear to re-balance themselves, then give way as well, tipping forward, the whole lot of them ultimately falling down atop the collapsed booth and its two struggling occupants.

* * *

 

“…Well, gentlemen, it seems to me that your performance this afternoon was _quite_ the success. Your totals are as follows: fifteen parents complaining about the story matter, eight commenting on the questionable safety of the equipment being used, five broken puppets, four sets of stitches, three overturned displays, one sprained wrist, countless bruises, numerous wet paint stains on the carpet and wall in the Children’s area…”

“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Deidara mumbles under his breath, gingerly flexing his hands, which are still red and swollen from all the stitches.

“…And let’s not forget the twenty-six crying children. An impressive finale, wouldn’t you say?”

Sasori hasn’t said a word since Kisame pulled him from beneath the wreckage of the booth and backdrops--thankfully Itachi had calmly stepped in and relieved him of the (worrisomely bloody) Exacto knife before he could do any further damage; the Head Reference Librarian just glares at whatever or whoever happens to be in his line of sight, which at the moment is Pein, fingers the brace on his sprained wrist, and tries to forget about the mottled blue-and-green paint stains spread across most of the back of his shirt, which isn’t easy since he also has paint in his hair and speckling his forearms and smeared across one of his leather A.Testoni shoes.

“…Well, I _did_ say that the backdrops were still gonna be kinda wet…” Deidara begins, then stops as Pein’s focus shifts solely to him; he’s in no condition to win a fight (verbal or otherwise) with anyone, much less someone like Pein, so he drops his eyes quickly, staring down at the scuffed tips of his Converse sneakers.

“Since both of you received injuries that required medical attention, Konan and Kakuzu cleaned up the paint…but I think you two deserve a reward for your hard work this afternoon, don’t you? And since you work so well together, I’ve decided that you should _share_ the duty of shelving the Children’s books for the next two months.”

Sasori stiffens almost imperceptibly, but he’s saved from having to break his stretch of silence by Deidara’s response. _“Two_ months? But you said one month before!”

“Did I? Well, I’m saying two months now. Now both of you get out of here and go home before I put you to work at the Circulation Desk for the rest of the day, injured or not. And I expect you both to be adequately recovered and ready for work come Monday morning, or it’ll come out of your vacation time. Understood?”

“Yes, sir, yeah…”

“…”

“What was that, Sasori?”

Sasori isn’t going to put up with that sort of thing this time, however, and merely gives Pein a hard look before turning on his heel and stalking out the door; Deidara gives a shrug, sketches a semi-mocking half-bow, and follows the redhead out.

Pein waits until he’s sure they’re gone before bringing up that afternoon’s file on the security camera, grabbing the bag of pre-popped popcorn safely tucked away beneath his desk, and enjoying the show yet again.

The new kid’s got flair, he has to admit as he rewinds the tape to rewatch the bit where the bear puppets maul Goldilocks, and he smiles to himself as he makes a note on his desk planner: _put Deidara in charge of programming._


End file.
